Denver and I became fast friends. Over the next few days, I plan to tell you a little bit about my trip to Denver, and notable differences from the Southeast, where I live.

First, about that weather thing… I had heard it said by friends before that if you don’t like the weather in Denver, wait twenty minutes. I thought they were exaggerating. Um no. They were not.

The shots in the gallery above were from my hotel room window. We stayed downtown for the conference, and had amazing views. On the first day, it was raining on and off. We walked from the hotel to an art fair a couple of blocks away, and listened to all of the vendors talk about how it had snowed, hailed, and been 60 degrees the day before. That day’s drizzle was nothing. No wonder everyone we saw was either carrying a North Face jacket or no less than three layers: some of them tied around their waist, or draped over shoulders like yuppies in the eighties. All of them with layers. Lots and lots of layers.

We do get weather in South Carolina. Our area has been known to get tornadoes, or bad thunderstorms. But he way the land is, with rolling hills and trees, you can’t really see it coming more than a few miles. So if you see a storm, odds are high that you will experience that storm.

All of these storms were hours from our hotel, and never hit downtown. The deep dark clouds stayed between us and the mountains, but to my eye, trained by South Carolina weather patterns, I thought it was going to hit immediately.

We walked everywhere downtown, so I had to be careful of the weather. Most nights, we didn’t have nay problem. One night it rained, and we waited it out in the restaurant where we were eating.

Over the next few days, we explored downtown Denver, including the Capital area. One day we joined a tour that went up to Loveland Pass and the continental divide. Another afternoon I met an author who I have previously only known online and she gave us another tour of the mountain area, came back down through Boulder canyon and showed us Boulder. We kick things off with a rainbow.